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AETHIOPIAN MEMNON:
AFRICAN OR ASIATIC?
Prof. F. Heichelheim has recently attempted to fix the composition
date of either the Aethiopis or the Little lliad to 663-656 B. C. l ). Ctesias'
story of the Assyrian king Teutamus sending the Aethiopian Memnon to
assist Priam, an Assyrian vassal 2), could have originated, his argument runs,
only at a time when Assyria actually did control Aethiopia and the Troad.
And such a time was 663-656 B.C.; for in 663 the Aethiopians of Upper
Egypt recognized nominal Assyrian overlordship, and after Psammetichus'
revo!t in 656 these Aethiopians would no longer have considered themselves subject to Assyria.
But there is every reason to believe that the Memnon of the Aethiopis
was an Asiatic Aethiopian, not an African 3). Son of Dawn, Memnon was
the Easterner incarnate. The Aethiopians of the epic poets lived on the
eastern shore of Ocean 4). Renewed contact with Egypt disdosed the southern Aethiopians, and the Greeks who fought in the service ofPsammetichus
II against the Africans of the Upper Nile perhaps enjoyed thinking that they
had fought against Aethiopians. But Memnon was not immediately transferred to the African branch of the Aethiopians. Aeschylus gave hirn a Cissian lineage 5). Herodotus knew nothing about an African Memnon, but
several times mentions Memnon in connection with Susa 0). In fact, Memnon did not become an Mrican Aethiopian until Hellenistic times. Agatharchides of Cnidus had heard daims that Memnon was an African'), and the
first explieit reference to an African Memnon at Troy is the parenthesis in
Diodoms z, zz, 4 8). Q. Curtius Rufus, however, mentions the African Memnon in 4, 8, 3, and if Curtius got his anecdote from Cleitarchus this identification could have been current as early as 300 B. C. Perhaps the dearer picture of eastern geography, together with the Ptolemaic emphasis on Egyptian involvement in Greek mythology, supplied the impetus for locating
Memnon in Upper Egypt 8 ).
That Ctesias' story concerned an Asiatie Memnon is entirely dear:
Memnon led Aethiopians and men of Susiana, Tithonus is the general of
Persis, and Memnon hirnself built a royal residence in Susa. Ctesias' story is
prosaic demythologizing: Memnon is a subject of Assyria, Tithonus is an
official, and Memnon dies in a Thessalian ambush. All of this bears little
resemblance to the Memnon of the Aethiopis, who comes as the son of
Dawn, wearing a panoply made by Hephaestus, and is slain by Achilles.
Ctesias, who delighted in corn:cting Greek tales by comparing them with
Oriental tales, must have hirnself introduced the Assyrians into the Memnon myth.
Robert Drews
Vanderbilt University
Nashville, Tennessee, U.S.A.
I) "The Historieal Date for the Final Memnon Myth", Rh. Mus. 100
(1957), pp. z59- z6 3
z) Produs' summary of the Aethiopis says nothing about any of this:
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Miszellen
orlfhjGwp xal eliTt!; T0 nau51 TC! Xa'l'll TOP Mef-tpopa neOUyel. xal GVf-tOJ.:fjl;
Ye1J0f-tepl11; ,ApTlAOXOI; vno MellPOPOI; apUteeiTat, enetTu ' AXtAAeVI; Mef-tpoPu X'l'et-